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On pretending to have read books

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: On pretending to have read books

#21

Post by havblue »

swayvil wrote: post #5

To be fair, reading a book and engaging in a conversation about a book are two utterly different bags. And engaging in a conversation about a book is often way more fun. And shifting gears between the two modes is difficult. So you really can't blame people for faking it.

I've noticed that Wheel of Time can be very fun to complain about: the plot goes nowhere fast, there's too much gender war dialogue, too many characters are belligerent idiots. But people still read it and talk about it, passionately. So it's still somehow engaging despite or maybe even because of the flaws.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#22

Post by Clubber »

>The sad truth is that we are becoming an illiterate society.

I guess this is the shame hook of the article. I don't think we're illiterate, probably the opposite. The amount of knowledge I gain by reading things other than books far surpasses the amount of knowledge I've gained reading books, and I've read a lot of them.

What's the point of reading books? Gaining knowledge. What's the point of riding a horse? Travel. Just because one method of doing a thing is losing popularity doesn't mean we are illiterate or we don't travel.

In fact, I think it's the opposite. I can read a 500 page book about a topic and retain maybe 1/10th of it after a year. I can read a wikipedia article on the same subject and retain 90% of it a year later. The latter is certainly better for a broad base of knowledge for the curious.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#23

Post by elliekelly »

pmyteh wrote: post #16
elliekelly wrote: post #6

I’d never heard of this publication before but the way this article so casually and confidently touted the importance their own literary reviews made me feel like I ought to have! I looked up their launch editorial[1] (from 2019) and it seems they’re angling to be a(n ostensibly) “middle of the road”/both sides are bad New Yorker with funding from Jeremy Hosking[2]. [1] https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2019/in…

I don't read the launch editorial as 'both sides are bad', but as a challenge to what they perceive as a sloppy and pervasive left-wing 'default' opinion. The 'new orthodoxy' language is straight out of the ongoing culture war, in particular. If they're aiming for a London Review of Books kind of space that makes sense - LRB is decidedly left wing if pretty heterodox and broad-minded - but for the political commentar…

I mean the “both sides bad” angle is flatly stated in the editorial:

> Ossified thought and a lack of intellectual rigour are depressing features of all sides of our political and cultural debate.

It’s pretty clear they’re trying to dress up their agenda-ed editorials as “common sense” compromise but if middle-of-the-road were truly the publication’s aim I can’t imagine Haskings would have had any interest in funding it.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#24

Post by icambron »

I can’t identify with any of this—I guess I simply don’t travel in social circles where reading books confers status—but I will say this article is wonderfully written and entertaining throughout. In particular, I got a good chuckle out of this turn of phrase:

> You don’t have to go fully commando, of course. There are plenty of briefs available.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#25

Post by 1sembiyan »

A 15 year old niece told me this week that she can’t be bothered to read because she gets bored by the time she gets to the end of the first page. “Why do that when I have TikTok and YouTube?”

It seems like there’s going to be a generation of people who don’t have to pretend to read - they simply don’t care to, and it doesn’t confer the same status TikTok fame does.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#26

Post by Renevith »

singlow wrote: post #13
kixiQu wrote: post #10

Is anyone else thrown by the lack of editing here? There are a couple things that read oddly but might just be regional wordings, but other sentences seem like they can't have passed under an editor's nose. Yikes.

I do generally get annoyed at poorly edited articles, but I didn't notice it - examples?

I'm not the person you replied to, but this stood out to me:

"And so (sorry, Orwell, but my guilt is too great to avoid the passive voice) certain strategies have evolved."

This sentence isn't in the passive voice. ("Have been evolved" would be.) I would expect a good editor to be a grammar expert and catch that error.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#27

Post by berlinquin »

ivad wrote: post #20
tapanjk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

Notes from Underground was the book that really pulled me into Dostoevsky (after initially reading C&P and disliking it - I doubtless missed quite a lot the first time through). Definitely in that category for me.

"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man." A good hook, but I had a tough time finishing Notes. The narrator really shows that yes, he is in fact a sick and spiteful man. Not one I'd want to pick up again.

I got pulled into Dostoyevsky through Brothers K, which led me to Notes eventually.

Do you know what translation of Notes you read? I think I read P&V, and if I read it again I'd want to try something else

Re: On pretending to have read books

#28

Post by hindsightbias »

havblue wrote: post #19
lolc wrote: post #18

Eh, if the book is not worth the read to you, why the angst about admitting that? Sure, if your job is to read books and write critiques on them, your position may be different. Thinking of it, it should be admissible to say "I stopped reading for these reasons" even for a critic. But what can they write after that? It's not going to fill the page, is it?

By being able to pretend that you've seen a television show you won't be left out of the conversation when it drifts towards something that people feel passionately about like Breaking Bad. With books there might be even more pressure: demonstrate your knowledge or you might not get invited for brunch next week.

Have always considered Atlas Shrugged to be the best example and anti-thesis too. I’ve met a lot of people who say it’s their favorite book but it becomes clear they’ve never really read most of it or finished it under light questioning. But it will get you invited to those parties anyway.

On the left, they’ve never read it and mentioning will cause your brunch invite to get lost.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#29

Post by marc_abonce »

Funnily enough, pretending to read a book will almost always make you better at these conversations than actually reading the book.

This is something I learned the hard way back in school. Whenever I actually read the book/chapter/article I would almost invariably do way worse on the quiz or essay compared to when I "cheated" by only reading a couple of summaries or reviews.

In fact, I really enjoyed reading Eco's Name of the Rose, but I didn't get OP's palimpsest reference and even after looking it up I still don't remember the exact context where this came up. I remember the novel more for it's retelling of early Franciscan history and the proto-Protestant movements in medieval Europe, and not so much for the whodunit mystery plot.

The reason is that a book has so much content that every reader will have a completely different takeaway and will remember different parts of it. However, most of the so-called classics have an semi "official" interpretation and "memorable quotes" that you're supposed to bring up.

That's not to encourage people to skip reading books, though. Reading some books can be a very pleasurable experience in itself in the same way that you wouldn't get the same experience from just reading the plot of a musical play or watching it in fast-forward.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#30

Post by sneak »

tapanjk wrote: post #9
karaterobot wrote: post #3

I thought for sure this essay would reference Pierre Bayard's really fun How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read . Oh well! Anyway, I think there are at least three kinds of reading. The one where you skim some reviews and read twenty pages is one of them. You can do this in order to just be able to say you've read something without putting in the "work", but you can also do this as part of a serious study of some s…

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

Mine (predictably):

1984

Stranger In A Strange Land

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Time Enough For Love

Friday

The Crying Of Lot 49

Seveneves

Neuromancer

I’ve read all of these at least 4 times, with reading-about-them in between.

I usually pick one up to re-read just a part of it, then I get sucked in and before I know it I’ve re-read the whole thing.

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